Learn Phoduit

Chapter 5. Localized Editing

All of the changes you’ve made so far have affected your entire image. It would be convenient if you could change the color of a subject or sharpen just the foreground. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to make changes to part of your image while leaving the rest unchanged.

5.1 Blending

Blending is the process of mixing pixels together from two or more images in order to produce a new image. Different “Modes” can be selected which define how the mixing is done. You can blend as many images together at once as you would like. Each image can be set to have its own blend Mode and are blended in order from bottom to top. It’s a simple but powerful concept that you will rely on often when you perform complex edits.

To blend images together, you use the Blend node located under “Composite” on the Nodes Toolbar. The Blend node is a little more complicated than the other nodes you’ve used so far. At first, it looks like it has two input anchors: New Source and Destination. After connecting to the New Source field, you’ll see Source, Mask, Opacity, and Mode fields appear. You’ll learn about these new fields shortly but take note of the New Source field at the top. Your connection will have moved to the new Source field. You can connect another image to the New Source field and a new set of fields will appear. This is how you can use a single Blend node to blend multiple images together.

Source

An image to be blended. Other Source images below are blended first. Each source image has its own Mask, Opacity, and Mode fields.

Mask

An image, usually greyscale, used to set which parts of the Source image are blended. Masks are such an important topic that they are covered in detail in the next section.

Opacity

How much of the Source image should be blended after masking. A value of 65535 completely blends the source image and a value of 0 completely leaves out the source image. This is useful for making an edit more subtle.

Mode

The method used for mixing pixels together. Click the combo box to see a preview of each mode. See the Blend node’s documentation for an overview of each mode.